Dialogue on the Uncial - CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image

Like a moth, my dilettantish fascination with typefaces and typography drew me to the Society of Typographic Arts collection. And while I could easily find something to say about any of the items in this collection, deciding which image to feature was a no-brainer: I chose the one that made me smile.

Victor Hammer created this keepsake specimen for “the Chicago people” (i.e., the STA) in 1946 as thanks to the society’s members for funding the completion and casting of his American Uncial typeface. The inspiration for the typeface derived from Hammer’s attempts to reproduce, in his own hand, the handwriting style of early medieval scribes. My immediate mental association of uncial letters with insular illuminated manuscripts (think Book of Kells) is reinforced by the historiated initial at the beginning of the text. But, wait! Hammer has deliberately modernized the antique script by hybridizing roman and blackletter forms and developing it into a typeface with both upper and lower case letters.

This uncial-style typeface compels the reader to slow down and READ the text, to take in the contrasting viewpoints of the historian and the designer as expressed by dialogists Paleographer and Printer. At the center of their discussion is the Printer’s emphatic belief that as language evolves, the visual form of the printed word must adapt; above all, typeface must harmonize with language. In meta fashion, Hammer’s Dialogue achieves that harmony.

The theatrical tone of the characters’ speech reads like a playscript, complete with the occasional stage direction. Although the two main characters are unnamed, the Printer obviously represents Hammer. The identity of the Paleographer is hinted at when the Printer quotes from Elias Avery Lowe’s chapter on handwriting in The Legacy of the Middle Ages (1926). (Hammer’s son Jacob, who performed the typesetting and presswork for his father’s layout in their printing collaborations, has a bit part.)

At the end of the day I’m still undazzled by uncial. But after slowing and reading about Hammer’s philosophy and process, I have a greater appreciation for the type.

Written by Ellen K. Corrigan, Assistant Professor, Cataloging Services, Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University

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